Once upon a time, a friend and I decided to go on a controlled trip to the mountains in the wet summer season and try out all the "survival" products we had accumulated, some since the Boy Scouting days. We learned a lot.

When it came to fire, we did not consider it a problem because we had so many "firestarters" along. We intended to cook on the fire and had no other means of cooking with us. So, we set up a tarp shelter, played around with various products and finally got to dinner time and time to start a fire. It had rained a slow steady rain all day and most wood was damp or real wet but we gathered and prepared enough wood for a nice fire and proceded to test our firestarting goodies. What a surprise, all the different products and not a single one worked, including the WetFire. Not sure how old they were, but for sure they were old and my friend had been carrying them in his PSK.

In fact some products would not even burn once a fire was started and the "firestarter" was thrown into the fire! What ended up working was a surprise as well. After much frustration we were about to walk a few miles back to the vehicle and pick up a backpacking stove to cook dinner on and I decided to try one last thing. I took pocket lint from some pocket and inside the pocket I had a bunch of Starburst candy wrappers which I had been eating all day, put that in the fire pit, sparked the lint with a Metalmatch and applied the Starburst wrappers. The waxed paper of the wrappers burned hot and burned a fairly long time. Our fire took off and we finally had dinner while discussing the useless items we had been depending on for decades and the possible outcome if needed in a real emergency.

Bottom line, always test things to be sure they really work, never trust just one method and always check items that have aged before taking them along and depending on them!

I now carry a variety of firemaking tools, all tested and checked. The Fire Fixin's kit is very good, the Vasoline/cotton balls works great (be sure they haven't dried out on you), waxpaper when wadded up is excellent as well. Simple is good!
Cheers